Derby’s Rolls-Royce has declined to comment on reports it is planning 4,000 job cuts – but admits it is wants to make “significant” savings through a “considerably simplified staff structure”.

A report in today’s Sunday Times claims the aerospace giant will announce thousands of redundancies on Friday and that Derby will “bear the brunt” of the cuts.

The newspaper says the cull would be aimed at slashing costs and boosting profits, with middle managers and back-office staff thought to be most affected.

The cuts are expected over several years, the report says.

Asked to comment on the speculation, a Rolls-Royce spokesman said: “In January, we announced a simplification of our business and began work on a restructuring of our support and management functions.

There are claims Rolls-Royce is about to announce 4,000 job cuts

“We added at the time of our annual results in March that we would focus on operational restructuring of management, support and engineering and technology functions across the corporate centre and also in our three divisions (Civil Aerospace, Defence and Power Systems).

“We are proposing to move to a considerably simplified staff structure, with fewer layers and greater spans of control across the group.

“We said we had retained restructuring experts Alvarez & Marsal to support us with this programme.

“We added that we expected this programme to deliver a significant reduction in costs and assist us in improving performance across the Group as a whole, and that we would provide clarity of these benefits at an event for financial analysts and investors on 15 June.

“We are not commenting on current media speculation about the potential impact.”

The speculation comes only two months after the company announced it was back in profit after bouncing back from its worst ever financial performance.

The firm, which has its Civil Aerospace and Nuclear divisions in Derby, reported pre-tax profit of £4.9 billion.

This is a marked contrast to a year ago when Rolls-Royce – the city’s largest private-sector employer with about 14,000 staff – reported its worst performance in its history.

Rolls-Royce chief executive Warren East

In April last year, the company posted a £4.6 billion pre-tax loss for 2016 due to a combination of a weaker pound and the impact of a £671 million settlement with regulators for past bribery and corruption cases.

Rolls-Royce’s profits for 2017 could have been higher had it not been for some “in-service” issues with two of its aero engines – the Trent 1000 and Trent 900.

The problems related to parts wearing out quicker than expected on the engines. This resulted in the firm redesigning the affected components. In all, Rolls-Royce took a £227 million hit from these issues.

There was better news for the company in terms of sales, with revenues rising to £16.3 billion, a rise of nine per cent. However, the firm’s order book dipped by 3% to £78.5 billion.

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Despite this, Mr East said he was pleased with the progress the firm had made over the past 12 months.

Speaking two months ago, he said: “Rolls-Royce made good progress in 2017. Financial results were ahead of our expectations and we achieved a number of important operational and technological milestones, but were impacted by the increasing cost and challenge of managing significant in-service engine issues.

“We are encouraged by the improving financial performance in 2017 with growing revenues contributing to improved profitability and cash generation.

“Looking forward, sustaining this improvement and delivering increasing cash flow generation will strengthen our position as one of the world’s leading industrial technology companies.”

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